Making room for Serendipity

I’m on the train heading to London to my first ever unconference LnD Connect.

Why am I going to an unconference?

I think it’s about the unexpected. I think it’s about serendipity. I think that by choosing to take a chance on something like LnD connect I am preparing the way for serendipity. I’m increasing the odds of something interesting happening. Strange things to say for someone who is often perceived as analytical?

How do you tip the scales of serendipity in your favour? In olden days you used to make a sacrifice to the gods. These days it’s less bloody. You have to be curious, you have to embrace opportunities to learn in every way. Scanning twitter for interesting articles or conversations. Starting conversations, meeting new people and exploring ideas together. Reading, reflecting. Especially reflecting. This is the most important part of how we learn. It’s my favourite part of learning because it leads to insight and to revelation. It leads to ideas that can be put into action, experiments that might do something amazing, or that might fail miserably.

It’s a very unbusinessy thing to do isn’t? Where are the results? Show me the data bitch! In a distinctly “left brain” world you’d be forgiven for feeling a little sheepish about even admitting such things. But fuck the left brain world. It’s dominated for too long. We need to embrace creativity and ambiguity. We need to make room for serendipity, we need to make space for divergent thinking. We need balance.